There’s a new posse in town aimin’ to improve greater Rockfish. It’s backed by business leaders, led by Woodward, Inc. Chairman Tom Gendron. They’ve raised several million private dollars. I noticed in Sunday’s story that the leaders do not include politicians.

That’s probably just as well. Politicians in Winnebago County spend way too much time fighting over who gets to play in the sandbox, when we need more sandboxes to fit in more players.

This new, nonpolitical Transformation group wants to move the Rockford area from the bottom of national “bad places” lists to the top 25. The Transformers must establish a list of bold, specific and easy-to-understand goals and specific implementation plans for each one.

Then they must work like hell to put them into place quickly. We don’t have a lot of time.

Setting goals and achieving them hasn’t been easy in Rockfordia. We have rewarded visionary leaders by getting rid of them. One successful leader, retired Rockford Park District Director Webbs Norman, “banned” me from ever using the word “visionary” to describe him. “No, heavens no, you can’t say that word here,” he’d tell me.

Yes, there is crime here. There is poverty. Education needs to improve, but that’s one area we really are finally working on together as a community.

Here’s the immediate problem: We lost many thousands of industrial jobs that paid enough money to raise a family with a bit to spare. Those people are still here, despite the lamentations of leaders who blame Rockford’s poverty on refugees from Chicago’s demolished housing projects. That’s a responsibility dodge.

Our poor people are primarily Rockfordians who used to have real jobs. They cannot live on the minimum wage “jobettes” created by strip mall and big-box store developers.

We have rocket scientists and other highly skilled workers here, too, and Woodward plans to have many more of them when it completes its new plant in Loves Park. So, we need to create a peaceful, pleasant environment that brings them and keeps them here.

And to begin to accomplish that, we first must stabilize the area by putting thousands of people to work at decent jobs that don’t require advanced degrees. We are missing that middle tier of $12 to $16 an hour jobs that provide a step up from the retail jobettes.

One way to do that is to start thinking of the Rock River Valley as a single entity, which will shock and appall politicians who covet sales tax dollars. Instead of four, maybe more, economic development entities in Winnebago and Boone counties, we must have just one.

Page 2 of 2 - It must be focused, aggressive and have the ability to act quickly. There’s a model for that 20 minutes south of Rockford in Rochelle, where “Team Rochelle” has been so successful at bringing new firms and thousands of new jobs to the Hub City that companies now call them, not the other way around! Those jobs employ people from at least five counties.

Let’s establish a Rockfordia office in the Chicago suburbs and pay large commissions to sales agents who get Chicagoland companies to move to the Rock River Valley. I’m sure all of you have even better ideas. That’s why I hope the Transformers seek to involve the people of the region in their effort.